Quest for the Dress: Finding Your Dream Wedding Gown without Losing Your Sanity, Friends or Groom
The subtitle to Ms. DiFabbio’s work is “Finding Your Dream Wedding Gown Without Losing Your Sanity, Your Friends or Your Groom.” A far more educated explanation might be “if you have no clue about planning a wedding, selecting a venue, buying a dress, or staying within a budget . . . buy this book”!
The book acts a primer for anyone who is overwhelmed—in every respect—by the prospect of getting married. Ms. DiFabbio tries to navigate the reader through every preparation related to a wedding, starting from the time the ring is on the finger until it’s time to store the wedding gown for posterity. While taking the reader on this seemingly endless journey, we are given every possible scenario to every possible situation that might confront someone in the preparation stages for the big day. Quite frankly, given the “what ifs” that Ms. DiFabbio presents, one would certainly have to have second thoughts about planning a wedding, or at the very least run—not walk—to the nearest event planner.
The basic premise of what goes into the purchase of a wedding dress is extremely convincing, but one cannot explain the differences between tulle and lace or Alençon lace and Chantilly lace without the reader having some general fashion knowledge; sketches may work for silhouette and style, but fabric swatches tell much more of a story than any amount of words when you have no real fashion experience. Nonetheless, the emotional part of the purchase is enormous and must be put into proper perspective to avoid any mistakes as the clock ticks closer to the wedding date.
So many of the possibilities that are offered by Ms. DiFabbio are substantiated by her experience as the designer/proprietor of her own business, but this is a case of too much information and is not helpful regardless of how amusing an anecdote proves. Quest for the Dress is an all-out effort to simplify the process of the entire wedding endeavor, but many of the issues would be very convincingly and easily solved with common sense and a cool head.